"The roads are filled with crucified men who violated the group's strict regulations during Ramadan. There are dozens of victims who remain hanged on electricity poles across the province."

Activists released a video online showing several people crucified alive in Hajin city in the eastern countryside of Deir ez-Zor, eastern Syria on charges of "breaking fast without legitimate excuses".

Speaking to ARA News in Deir ez-Zor, media activist Saray ad-Din reported that since the start of Ramadan, the IS group has punished dozens of civilians on charges of deliberately breaking fast.

"The group made many cages to lock up these 'fasting violators' and show them to public in order to humiliate them among people. The alleged caliphate of al-Baghdadi has seen various kinds of punishments during Ramadan," the source said.

"The radical group has crucified and executed many people on charges of breaking the fast in the cities of Deir ez-Zor, al-Bukamal, Hatlah, Mayadeen and Sabha in eastern Syria."

An Iranian woman sentenced to more than 12 years in prison for drawing satirical cartoons of politicians is now facing new charges - for shaking a man's hand.

Artist Atena Farghadani, 29, is currently serving a long stretch behind bars as punishment for depicting government officials, who decided to restrict women's access to birth control, as animals.

However, both Ms Farghadani and her lawyer Mohammad Moghimi have since been charged with having an 'illegitimate sexual relationship short of adultery' and 'indecent conduct' because they shook hands in prison following the trial, according to Amnesty International.

Ms Farghadani's was on trial in May at Tehran's so-called Revolutionary Court on charges of insulting members of parliament through paintings, gathering and colluding against national security, spreading propaganda against the system and insulting the president and the supreme leader.

She was sentenced to 12 years and nine months in jail last month. Experts believe this far exceeds the legal limit for such a crime, which currently stands at seven years and six months.

But Amnesty International says she now faces new charges.

Mr Moghimi visited Ms Farghadani in prison after her trial and shook her hand, which has resulted in the two new charges being brought against them both, the human rights organisation has reported.

The lawyer was arrested on June 13 and he was released three days later after posting bail of around £40,000. They are set to be tried for those charges in due course.

Ms Farghadani was initially arrested during a Revolutionary Guard raid on her home last August.

It's claimed the guards burst into her home, blindfolded her, seized her personal belongings and then hauled her off to Tehran's notorious Evin Prison.

She was kept in solitary confinement with no access to a lawyer or her family, according to Amnesty International.

The artist was bailed for a short time last November, but was quickly returned to jail after being accused of openly discussing the torture and beatings she suffered at the hands of the wardens.

Ms Farghadani even went as far as to publish a YouTube video discussing her treatment in prison, which included being interrogated for nine hours each day for six weeks and being beaten.

She also posted an open letter to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei on her Facebook page upon being returned to her cell.

Three weeks after she was rearrested in January this year, Ms Farghadani went on hunger strike to protest the poor prison conditions.

Her lawyer said she suffered a heart attack and briefly lost consciousness in late February as a result of her strike.

Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa deputy director, said: 'No one should be in jail for their art or peaceful activism.

Atena Farghadani has effectively been punished for her cartoons with a sentence that is itself a gross caricature of justice.

'Such harsh and unjust sentences seem to be part of a disturbing trend in Iran, where the cost of voicing peaceful dissent is escalating.'

Ms Farghadani's relatives, who have received death threats since her initial arrest, last month said she plans to launch an appeal against the harsh sentence.

The judge who handed down the harsh prison sentence, Abolghassem Salavati, is known as 'Iran's hanging judge' or 'the judge of death' in his country thanks to his reputation for harsh punishments.

He is particularly notorious for handing out sentences to journalists, artists, bloggers and political activists, making his named in the aftermath of the street protests that were brutally crushed during Iran's 2009 general election.

"In a year full of celebrations marking 50 years of German-Israel diplomatic relations, diplomatic niceties were absent at last week's UNHRC Gaza report vote in Geneva, where the Merkel administration condemned Israel for its military methods during Operation Protective Edge.

Asked by The Jerusalem Post on Monday why Germany voted against Israel, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry wrote, 'Germany led intensive negotiations with EU states in the United Nations Human Rights Council over the draft of the resolution. Thereby important changes of the content of the resolution could be reached, for example, a restriction of the follow-ups to the report of the fact-finding commission...'

German and Israeli critics hammered away at the Gaza report because of its one-sided attack on Israel. Philipp Mißfelder, a leading Christian Democratic Union part MP in the Bundestag, told the Post on Monday, 'Germany should not have supported the UNHCR report covering Operation Protective Edge.'

Mißfelder, the foreign policy spokesman for the CDU-CSU parties in the Bundestag, added, 'The report did not do justice to Israel's engagement. The Jewish state has the obligation and right to protect its territory and citizens. Although Hamas frequently used human shields, Israel's military did everything to prevent losses among the Palestinians...'"

"The report by the Commission of Inquiry appointed by the UN Human Rights Council to examine the events surrounding Operation Protective Edge was published on June 22, 2015. As expected, the report criticizes Israel, concluding that its military operations violated the laws of armed conflict and expressing concern regarding the possible commission of war crimes.

The report is ... also extremely critical of Israel, and again reflects a clear lack of consideration of the actual realities of warfare, drawing conclusions based on pronouncements that are factually and legally dubious. This approach is problematic for Israel, which will find itself vulnerable to public criticism and perhaps even legal action based on the report's contentions. The report is also worrisome for all other countries engaged in warfare in populated areas against enemies that do not distinguish themselves from the civilian population.

During Operation Protective Edge, the IDF fought against a semi-state organization (Hamas) and other armed groups that employed an intentional strategy of systematic violation of the laws of armed conflict, including indiscriminate firing at Israeli civilians and the use of Palestinian civilians and civilian objects (e.g., schools, hospitals, and mosques) as bases for their military activity.

While the commission's report makes reference to this reality when leveling criticism at the conduct of Hamas, it fails to assign it the appropriate weight when examining Israeli actions. The result is an analysis that examines Israel's actions in a detached and one-sided manner, without relating to the actions of its adversaries...

The misguided and unprofessional analysis of combat actions taken in populated areas is based on erroneous methodology, unrealistic expectations, and standards that exceed those contained in the laws of armed conflict and applied by other military forces in the world. This is potentially detrimental not only to Israel but to the ability of other law abiding countries to confront similar challenges of warfare."

The "humanitarian aid" on the flotilla- A solar panel and nebulizer (photo by Freedom Flotilla Coalition)

"The hypocrisy of the claim that flotillas to Gaza are a 'humanitarian' endeavor has now been fully exposed: As Jonathan Tobin noted last week, the latest proved to be carrying a mere two cardboard boxes worth of aid. But pro-Palestinian activists are also guilty of an even more egregious form of hypocrisy: They proclaim all anti-Israel U.N. decisions to be binding international law, but openly flout U.N. decisions that happen to be in Israel's favor. The Gaza flotillas are a perfect example.

According to the flotilla activists, their goal was 'to break the illegal blockade on Gaza.' But a blue-ribbon international commission appointed by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in 2010 concluded that the blockade is in fact a 'legitimate security measure' that fully complies with international law. So the same activists who lambaste Israel for noncompliance with anti-Israel U.N. resolutions – like those against the settlements, or the one ostensibly granting Palestinian refugees a 'right of return' to Israel – feel it's perfectly fine for them to ignore U.N. decisions that don't serve their cause...

But pro-Palestinian activists selectively treat U.N. decisions that favor their cause as 'binding international law' while simply ignoring decisions that don't favor their cause. And that position makes a travesty of the most fundamental principle of any kind of law: that it must apply equally to all parties in all cases, regardless of whether it helps or hurts a particular cause.

Thus, anyone who claims to support international law should be the first to denounce this abuse of U.N. decisions. And the fact that so many self-proclaimed advocates of international law instead lend tacit support to this travesty is precisely why no self-respecting person should accept their interpretation of anything."

"Those who are afraid of coming out against terrorism in the end will be attacked by terrorism, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday in response to the passing of an anti-Israel UN Human Rights Council resolution on the Gaza war last summer.

'The UN Human Rights Council is not interested in the facts and is not really interested in human rights,' Netanyahu said. 'On the day on which Israel was fired at from Sinai, and at a time when ISIS [Islamic State] is committing vicious terrorist attacks in Egypt, as [Syrian President Bashar] Assad slaughters his people in Syria and as the number of arbitrary executions per annum climbs in Iran – the UN Human Rights Council decides to condemn the State of Israel, for no fault of its own, for acting to defend itself from a murderous terrorist organization.'

Israel's hands will not be tied and it will 'continue to defend its citizens against those who call for its destruction and take daily action to achieve this goal,' Netanyahu said.

The United States was the only country to support Israel and oppose a resolution that ostensibly holds Israel and Palestinian terrorist organizations accountable for human rights violations during Operation Protective Edge but was largely understood to be speaking about holding Israel accountable for possible war crimes.

The resolution passed by a vote of 41 in favor, one against and five abstentions; the US cast the only 'no' vote..."